


Between Eternities

by BeautifulSoup



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Finding your place, Found Family, Grief/Mourning, Kissing, M/M, Pre-Epilogue, The Princess Bride References, The Raven King Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-05 16:22:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 12,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6712357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeautifulSoup/pseuds/BeautifulSoup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>***RAVEN KING SPOILERS***</p><p> <i>The world is waiting for them. Not the world they saved last night, but the other one. The solid, undreamt and undreamlike world of Aglionby and Ganseys.</i></p><p>A series of vignettes set between chapter 67 and the epilogue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Vignettes set mainly between chapter 67 and the epilogue that I just can't get out of my head because this book has _destroyed me_. They may jump around time-wise a bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is by far the longest chapter in this little series.

Ronan is quiet in the car back from Cabeswater, or where Cabeswater used to be. His eyes are closed, his head back against the headrest of the passenger seat. He isn’t asleep, but Adam doesn’t feel much like talking anyway, so he lets him be. Orphan Girl sits silently in the seat behind them. Adam can see her trembling in the mirror.

They had helped Gansey into the back of Henry’s car, Blue sliding into the backseat beside him, Henry looking vaguely terrified at the responsibility of driving them both back. Gansey had been unsteady, his eyes looking somewhere beyond them, but as they got to the car he had given them a small, weary smile.

Ronan had given Adam his keys, and Adam had understood as Ronan called Declan to check up on Matthew, heaved an enormous, shuddering sigh, said _“It’s over,”_ and hung up, throwing his phone into the door pocket and throwing his head back against the seat.

Adam isn’t sure how much of Gansey they’ve managed to save. Isn’t sure what Cabeswater had left to give them, to take from them. He watches Henry’s headlights in the rear-view mirror, imagining he can see what’s going on there, hear it. He knows, somehow, that the car is silent, like the BMW, that Gansey’s head is resting on Blue’s shoulder or lap, her fingers playing with his hair.

He doesn’t even think where he’s driving to, doesn’t need to. He heads for Monmouth.

Blue and Henry help Gansey out of the car while Adam and Ronan watch. His feet are unsteady. He seems to have very little control over his legs, but he seems more present now. Adam and Ronan step forwards at the same moment.

They struggle up the stairs to the first floor with him between them as Blue heads them up and Henry follows behind, Orphan Girl close behind him. They settle him on the sofa, and he grips their hands as they step back, looking at the both of them with earnest eyes and the shadow of a smile. It’s an expression that is so _Gansey_ that something uncoils in Adam’s guts and he lets out a sigh.

Gansey doesn’t say _thank you_. He doesn’t need to.

Adam hears scraping noise, a muffled _oof_ , and sees that Blue has dragged the mattress from Gansey’s bed into the middle of the floor.

As they cross paths – Blue heading to Gansey, Adam following Ronan to his room – he rests his hand on her shoulder, squeezes gently, a silent show of solidarity. She smiles at him, sad and lopsided, and nods once.

No-one has spoken yet. No-one dares to break the silence. It feels like a wake. It _is_ a wake, he supposes.

There’s a rustle, and Adam glances back over his shoulder to see Blue removing Gansey’s wet sweater, pulling it up over his arms like he’s a toddler.

“This isn’t how I’d imagined the first time you undressed me, Jane.” Gansey says, weakly. Blue snorts. Some of the tension flows out of the room like someone’s opened a window. _It’s going to be alright_ , Adam lets himself think.

He follows after Ronan.

When he reaches Ronan’s room, he finds him standing looking over the clutter, gazing with empty eyes at the dream-things scattered around. Adam shuts the door behind him, and Ronan glances toward the sound.

It’s only been a day, but it feels like months since they had been so simply and incandescently happy at the Barns. The weariness and grief is etched into Ronan’s pale face; he looks like a different person. Adam steps close, lifts his hands, traces Ronan’s cheekbones and lips and nose with light, fluttering fingers. He wipes a crusted streak of black from Ronan’s upper lip. Ronan just looks at him, blue eyes sharp in the darkness. Adam looks back. His fingers rest with his eyes on the bruises on Ronan’s neck. Adam inhales.

“Don’t you dare fucking say it.” Ronan’s voice is low, growling, and his hands are warm and firm around Adam’s wrists.

“Don’t say what?”

Ronan doesn’t answer, but Adam can taste the _sorry_ on his own tongue and swallows it. Ronan leans forward and kisses Adam with a ferocity he wouldn’t have been able to imagine before the Barns. This feels different again, as all their kisses have. This kiss is an answer, it is protective. Ronan’s hands let go of Adam’s wrists and instead move up to cradle the back of his head, tangling in his hair.

“It wasn’t your fault.” Ronan says, voice a hoarse whisper. Adam feels his breath against his lips more than he hears the words. The words are just a supplement to the kiss, anyway.

Adam kisses him once in reply, short, gentle, and steps back. They’re both filthy, wet from the rain, shoes and pants muddy from the forest. Ronan’s still covered in gore. Some of it has transferred to Adam’s shirt.

“Can I borrow some clothes?”

When they’ve both changed into something clean and dry, they heave Ronan’s mattress into the main room and set it down flush against Gansey’s. Someone has brought out Noah’s mattress, too. Adam bites his lip.

When Gansey had woken, he had gasped Noah’s name, but had not had the strength to say more.

They would hear the story when the time was right, Adam knew. They were all too exhausted and too drained now for anything but sleep.

Blue and Gansey are on the mattress, both in clean clothes; Gansey in his sweatpants and t-shirt, Blue in a pair of his boxers and his yellow sweater. Henry also seems to be wearing Gansey’s clothes where he stands beside the sofa looking at Orphan Girl. She is staring right back at him with her large dark eyes.

They settle down on the mattresses, Henry hesitating on the outside until Blue holds her hand out to him. He takes it and lets her pull him down.

They bracket Gansey in the middle of them, Ronan and Blue either side of him, Adam and Henry either side of them. Gansey holds Blue’s hand to his lips, brushing her knuckles; she sucks in a breath that Adam hears shaking. Gansey holds his other hand out to Adam, and when they lazily bump knuckles Adam feels his soul warm a little more.

They’re a pile of puppies, sleeping tangled together on their patchwork of mattresses and blankets. Ronan’s head on Adam’s chest, his legs thrown over Gansey’s; Blue’s feet pressed against Adam’s legs, her head cushioned on Gansey’s stomach, Henry’s on hers. Adam sighs and closes his eyes, feels Ronan’s hand slip into his, tightens his grip. Orphan Girl sleeps curled at their feet like a fawn.

Adam sleeps better than he has in months. How much of it is the easy warmth of his friends all around him, how much is the relief after the stress and horror of the day, and how much is the absence of Cabeswater pressing against his consciousness he doesn’t know, but he’s glad for whatever it is.

They had nearly lost everything. They would cling to each other as long as they needed to.

-

The morning is pale and weak through the windows, illuminating the tangle of limbs in the middle of the floor faintly, dust motes diffusing the hint of sunlight to make themselves glow.

The world is quiet and grey when Adam wakes. He lies with his eyes shut for as long as he feels he can. He does not want the day to begin.

The world is waiting for them. Not the world they saved last night, but the other one. The solid, undreamt and undreamlike world of Aglionby and Ganseys, the world of explaining a missing day and a missed fundraiser. This will be Gansey’s problem, he knows, but they cannot let him face it alone.

He opens his eyes and blinks up at the soaring ceiling of Monmouth and tries to think about how they can explain it all. He doesn’t think the elder Ganseys will accept _“Sorry, but I found that dead Welsh king, who turned out to actually be dead, and then_ I _died for a bit again. Remember the last time that happened?”_ from the younger Gansey.

A tap on his fingers distracts him, and he turns his head to see Blue looking at him across Gansey and Ronan’s sleeping forms, her chin on Gansey’s chest, her head rising and falling with his breath. She holds her hand out to him, and he slides their fingers together, rests their arms over Ronan’s and Gansey’s chests. He thinks back to the first time he had held her hand, sitting in Helen’s helicopter on their way to discovering Cabeswater. There’s a warmth there, unfurling just beneath his skin, but not the quite same as he had imagined it would be all those months ago.

He looks at her, sees the strain in the skin around her eyes. She closes her eyes and shakes her head softly when he frowns, tightens her grip on his fingers. He holds onto her until she slips back to sleep, until he follows her.

-

The second time Adam wakes, the room is brighter and someone’s phone is ringing. He’s still holding Blue’s hand.

Henry groans and appears on the other side of Blue, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. The ringtone is loud and offensively upbeat, so Adam isn’t surprised when Henry pulls his phone from his pocket and answers it. He mutters something low in Korean and gets to his feet, wandering over to the windows with the phone pressed to his ear.

Blue’s hand leaves Adam’s, slipping away as Gansey stirs. His hand slides to rest on Ronan’s chest, and he’s suddenly aware that Ronan’s body is tense and still, his eyes open as he rides out the paralysis that comes with waking. Adam rests his hand over Ronan’s heart.

All eyes are on Gansey as he sits stiffly, Blue’s hands on his back and his shoulder. He grimaces and rubs a hand over his face, then blinks owlishly around at them. They stare back. Henry hangs up and comes back, kneeling beside Orphan Girl at the foot of their makeshift bed. Ronan stirs, sits up, holds a strange blue flower lightly between his fingers like a cigarette.

“My head,” Gansey groans, rubbing at his temple.

“Well,” Henry says, “you have been mostly dead all day.”

Strangely, it’s Ronan who laughs first. It starts with a puff of air from his nose, and gradually grows louder and spreads, until they’re all laughing, a damn bursting and flooding the room. Orphan Girl jumps to stand and stare at them, bewildered. They all slump forward onto Gansey, wrapping their arms around him until he topples back, still laughing.

Adam’s heart swells with impossible joy as he buries his face in Ronan’s neck and grips Gansey’s shirt in his fist.

-

Gansey steels his shoulders and strides off to face his family alone.

They had discussed plans, ideas, not-quite-lies they could fabricate to appease both anger and worry. They settled on to simplest: they had gone into a cave and lost signal and track of time. The car broke down. A shitstorm of bad timing and sod’s law.

There was no way they could tell the whole truth, no way they would be believed, although both Gansey and Ronan looked pale and drawn in a way Adam had never seen.

Then Gansey had said he would tackle it alone, they were his family after all, and the others had argued and argued but he had not given in. The set of his chin then had been kingly, and they had backed down.

So now they stand in the scrub around Monmouth Manufacturing and watch Gansey drive Henry’s unsettlingly silent car away. They’ve yet to pick up the Camaro from wherever he had abandoned it last night, no, two nights ago. Three? Adam feels as though he’s returned from Faerie ten years after he left.

“Fuck.” Ronan says, and kicks the wall. They all look at him. He kicks the wall again.

Henry’s phone starts blasting its ringtone again, so they all look at him instead. He glances at the screen with a wince.

“I need to go, my mom’s in town.” He says, frowning an apology at them.

Blue hugs him tightly. His arms wrap around her instantly. “Come back when you can. We’ll keep you updated.”

He steps back and nods, then turns to look at Adam and Ronan. Ronan is still glaring furiously after Gansey, but Adam takes a step forward and holds out his fist. Henry’s face lights up as he knocks his knuckles against Adam’s.

“Oh man, an Adam Parrish fist bump, the world’s ninth greatest wonder. Thanks, man.”

Ronan snorts and rolls his eyes. They ignore him.

Henry walks away, waving over his shoulder. He’s still wearing a pair of Gansey’s shorts and an offensively orange polo shirt. They look at home on him. Adam watches him go.

“Oh, hi.”

He turns at Blue’s soft voice and follows her eyes to see Orphan Girl standing just inside the door, clinging to the doorframe.

The girl’s eyes are wide and uncertain, glancing furtively between the three of them. Adam, without thinking about it, drops into a crouch and holds his hand out to her, beckoning her forward. She scurries towards him. Her face is awash with familiar expressions that make Adam’s heart hurt.

It’s strange, watching her move, like a deer running on its hind legs, and something in Adam’s brain tells him it shouldn’t be possible for her to balance like that on her hooves, but she is quick and agile and her hand is in Adam’s before he has much more time to contemplate it. He pulls her to his chest and wraps his arms around her. She’s so slight, he’s worried that if he holds her too firmly her bones will break. Her face is hot against his neck, her hands twist tightly in Ronan’s borrowed shirt.

“It’s alright,” he says, voice gentle, his cheek against the dirty grey of her skullcap, his hand cradling the back of her head. “It’s alright.”

He looks up to see Ronan looking down at them, his eyebrows drawn together, shoulders hunched as he stands with his hands in his pockets. Adam isn’t sure what’s hiding in Ronan’s face, in the shadows under his eyes, but he knows it’s not anger; whatever it is, it’s warm and curious.

“Hey,” Adam says as Orphan Girl pulls her face from his neck to look at him. He unwraps his arms from her, cups her face in his hands for a brief moment, and unfastens his watch from his wrist. “Why don’t you take this again? I don’t need it anymore.”

He does, but she needs it more.

The way she tilts her head at him isn’t entirely human, and reminds him more of Chainsaw than of Ronan. He waits for her to nod, a small smile carving a dimple in her cheek, before he fastens the chewed band back around her wrist. He glances up; Ronan is still looking at them with the same expression. Blue is smiling, but there’s something sad behind her eyes.

“Okay?” He asks Orphan Girl, and she nods again, just a small jerk of her chin. He presses a quick kiss to the top of her head as he stands up. Something complicated happens to Ronan’s face when Adam meets his eyes.

“ _Volo ire in domum suam_ ,” Orphan Girl says quietly, and Adam realises that her hand is in his, and he has no memory of taking it. Her voice is soft and accented by a long forgotten language. Ronan sighs and puts his hand on her head, pushing her hat down over one eye.

“We need to wait for Gansey.” He says, roughly but not unkindly. Adam knows that when Orphan Girl says _home_ , she means the same thing Ronan does when he says _home_ , and it isn’t Monmouth Manufacturing. Ronan takes a deep breath as if he’s trying to smell the fresh, clean air of the Barns.

“He’ll be a while.” Blue says, looking at the end of the road where Gansey had driven out of sight.

“They’re going to put him under house arrest until he goes to college.” Adam says, walking back inside, Orphan Girl’s hand still in his. “Then they’ll put a GPS implant in his arm.”

“Nah,” Ronan voice is warm with humour as his boot scuffs the ground, “they’ll guilt trip him and he’ll just have to go to a hundred more of those fucking things.”

“Maybe they’ll make him bring us,” Blue’s grin is devious. She’s practically rubbing her hands together. Adam snorts.

“I don’t think I’ll be invited back after last time.” A laugh pulls itself from his chest, surprising him. “Lynch and Sargent unleashed on a roomful of brownnosing politicians, though. I wouldn’t miss that for the world.”

He can almost see them standing together in a corner, Ronan in his jeans and leather jacket, Blue in one of her dresses made from at least seven separate items of clothing, glaring a wall around themselves before tearing it down and drawing blood from everyone in the room.

He laughs again, surprising himself at the looseness of it, and when he looks around Ronan is smiling at him wide and free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a mess, I'm sorry, I just had to get it out because, you know, _DESTROYED_.


	2. Chapter 2

The Ganseys were, in general, a canny lot.

As always with generalisations there are exceptions, which in this case was the youngest of the Ganseys. He was an exception because had he very recently became spectacularly _un_ canny.

He didn’t feel very uncanny at all as he drove Henry’s car – _electric_ car, as he had pointed out to Blue what felt now like several years ago – towards a final battle. He felt like he was seven years old again and about to be grounded for ripping the knees in his new suit. He certainly didn’t feel like he had been raised from the dead for the second time the previous afternoon.

Part of the fear tensing his wrists was that he didn’t know what to expect. His family were famously well put-together, and none of them could abide arguments. That isn’t to say that they never argued, it’s just that they did it quietly. Words weren’t so much their weapons as eyebrows and pointed looks, and, most powerfully, the spaces between words. Gansey knew he had stepped over the border out of Pointed Look Land into uncharted territories.

As he pulled up in front of the old schoolhouse it didn’t look any different to when he’d been there with Blue and Henry on Saturday, which seemed unlikely. He took a moment to breathe, to fill his lungs until they ached and let the air out slowly, and to squeeze his hands tightly on the vegan suede of the steering wheel. He shut his eyes tight, then got out of the car before he could talk himself out of it.

“Ah,” Helen said, eyes icy as she opened the door. “Nice to see you, _Dick_.” The emphasis she placed on his name was unusual but, he considered, not out of place.

“Hi,” he said, lamely, and shuffled his feet on the welcome mat. Her eyes burned a hole through the chest of his polo shirt. She waited until she hit bone before throwing the door open with grace and elegance and barely disguised rage.

His parents were out on the back porch drinking coffee and reading the papers. A selection of viennoiserie sat on a plate on the table between them. Gansey assumed they were untouched, as there were no pastry flakes on either his parents’ clothing or the papers.

“Your golden son has returned.” Helen said, brushing past him to take the seat she had clearly just vacated. She took up her coffee and her paper at once and very obviously kept her attention on her brother.

“Dick!” Gansey’s Winning Smile masked his grimace at his mother’s relieved gasp of his name. She was on her feet in a moment, squeezing him tight. The fact of the hug alone was almost enough to bring Gansey to tears. The Ganseys were not a family of huggers. He let her hold him close, let his own arms close around her back, let himself press his face to her neck like he was a child.

“I’m sorry, mom,” he said, muffled by her neat but warm cardigan. “I’m so sorry.” She clutched at his shoulders for a moment, then released him.

“Dick, what happened to you?” His father was standing now, striding over to put an arm on Mrs Gansey’s shoulder. That was how Ganseys were supposed to move. Striding.

He wasn’t sure what to tell them. The story he had mapped out with the others in Monmouth that morning felt flimsy now he was standing looking at his parents’ worried, hopeful faces. The concern etched into them made his heart feel small and dense, like a black hole sucking the rest of his ribcage inwards. He wondered how much of their worry was caused by his own face. He had caught a glimpse of himself in the Fisker’s rear-view mirror before coming inside, and in that moment had thought it wouldn’t be hard to pass himself off as someone who had died yesterday.

He had managed to call them on the way back to Monmouth afterwards, his voice weak as Blue held the phone to his ear. He had told them only that there had been a bit of an accident, but everything was fine and he would explain when he got back. It hadn’t been enough for them, but his head had started swimming and he had to lay it down on Blue’s lap. Her hands in his hair had helped tremendously.

The Gansey standing before his concerned parents now, though, couldn’t bear the thought of telling them the truth, so he wove together the partial-truths:

They had gone out the night before the fundraiser looking for Glendower (truth), thinking the mountains would be a good destination (lie).

The car had broken down (truth) and the phone signal had vanished (truth), but they decided to leave it to rest and explore anyway (lie), because sometimes the Pig just needed a little alone time (truth).

They had found a cave (truth) but decided to leave it for another day when they would have more light (lie), but while they backed away Adam had slipped and fallen in (lie, one that made his throat sour with guilt, but Adam was the one with injuries that might match), and they had all stayed to help (truth).

They rescued him (almost truth, not quick enough in reality) and got back to the car, which still wasn’t working (lie).

Adam had found out the problem and knew how to fix it (truth), but because the fall had ruined his hands he had to dictate to Ronan and it had taken much longer (lie).

Gansey had called as soon as he had been able to (truth).

He hoped the truths outweighed the lies enough to convince. He didn’t want to tell his family the truth, didn’t even know how to begin to phrase it. They had been supportive of, if bemused by, his quest for Glendower, had considered it almost PhD research and fabulous for college applications, but they had never been clued in to the strangeness of it, the danger that Gansey himself had only become aware of in the past few months. They wouldn’t understand the magic.

His parents frowned in the right places, gasped in the right places, _“Oh, my”_ ed in the right places. They were good active listeners. Helen remained in her chair, watching him carefully over the lip of her coffee cup.

“I can’t believe you’d do something so reckless,” his father said firmly when Gansey had finished. “Why didn’t you take the satellite phone?”

“I…” Gansey stumbled in the surprise that the story seemed to have worked. “I forgot to charge it, I haven’t had to use it since Peru.”

They both frowned at him in a way that didn’t actually cause any wrinkles between their eyebrows. It was a frown that came from the eyes rather than the face. Gansey wondered if there was some kind of test he had to pass to gain that ability.

“How was the fundraiser?” He asked after giving them a moment to show their disapproval. “Was the mess from Raven Day cleared up in time?”

This allowed the elder Ganseys space to relax again, to ease into what they were used to and good at. Gansey allowed himself to be steered to a chair and given a cup of coffee as he was regaled with the story of the table covers, the chair backs, the how Helen had struggled to find organic canapés and _“Really, Dick, I don’t know how you boys can survive there without a Whole Foods for fifty miles”_. They told him how well the speeches had gone, how the hall had looked simply tremendous, how well Helen had put the entire thing together in such a short space of time, and how Headmaster Child had been _so_ kind and generous, how Mrs Gansey had thanked him profusely in her speech but he had just blushed and chuckled. Gansey was suspicious of this part. Child had never struck him as a blusher _or_ a chuckler.

They never once mentioned their anger or their worry over his whereabouts, but did say that the Congressman from Charlottesville had asked after him, and the other charming young man he had met in D.C.

Helen kept quiet and kept her eyes on him.

“So,” she said when the fundraiser tales petered out. “What’s next for your dead king?”

It was a wound Gansey hadn’t expected to feel so fresh. At her question, though, he felt her heel digging into his exposed guts, felt her shoving handfuls of salt into the cavity in his chest.

“Nothing,” he said truthfully, looking down at his hands clutching his cup, letting the reality of that wash over him. There was nothing more for Glendower. Glendower _was_ nothing. “My future is clear.” As he said it, everything seemed so much brighter than even a second before.

“Great,” Helen said. “You can start by handing me a croissant.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the Fisker does, in fact, have a vegan suede/leatherette interior. No, I totally did not watch three different review videos on youtube.


	3. Chapter 3

The road out to Singer’s Falls is long and winding, and Adam feels something like sleep tugging at him as he gazes out the window, watching the countryside slide by in the wash of the headlights.

 Ronan’s music is on, but not blasting. It’s not his usual offensive pounding techno, but something of Niall’s, pipes and fiddles twirling around each other furiously. The gentle tapping of Ronan’s fingers against the steering wheel draws Adam’s attention. Ronan’s profile, outlined in the dark by the lights from the dashboard, is sharp, serious, and Adam suddenly realises what Ronan is going home to. He’s ashamed of himself for forgetting.

He bites his lip and looks back to the window, wondering if a body will still be on the floor, if blood and gore will still stain the sofa. How long ago that seems.

The car turns down the drive to the Barns, the moving headlights illuminating the scattered buildings and making them look like living things in the darkness. Ronan stops the car in front of the house and cuts the engine. No skids, no handbrake turns. Just stops, parks. He sighs and looks at Adam’s shitbox, still parked beside the porch.

“Ronan?” Adam asks, gentle. He reaches a hand to Ronan’s shoulder and doesn’t flinch when he’s shrugged off.

“Well.” Ronan says, but doesn’t finish. He gets out the car, Chainsaw flapping onto his shoulder, and shuts the door. Adam follows, letting Orphan Girl scramble out behind him.

As Ronan opens the front door, Adam holds his breath, not sure what he’s going to see. Ronan’s shoulders slump and he steps over the threshold, and as Adam follows him through, he is grateful at the lack of a body, the clean sofa.

Mr Gray is, unsurprisingly, very good at his job. The dog bowl Adam had used for scrying still on the floor is the only clue to what had happened.

Ronan’s gaze snags on the sofa. Something flits across his face before he can disguise it, and he marches into the kitchen.

A symphony of crashes and clatters pummels the air. Ronan’s grief is kinetic now he has nothing to focus on, no battle to plunge into. Adam gives him the space to work it out, waits until the destruction has stopped before he follows.

By the time Adam reaches him, his anger has worn itself out. Drawers of utensils have been scattered across the room, the floor littered with strange tools Adam couldn’t even begin to name. One cupboard door is hanging from a single hinge, the mismatched crockery inside safe.

Ronan stands at the window, knuckles white where he’s gripping the edge of the sink. His shoulders are shaking with his breath, his head bowed in a way that makes Adam think for a brief, delirious second that he’s ripped it off.

“Ronan,” Adam says softly, more a warning of his presence than anything. Ronan’s stance doesn’t change. Adam crosses over to him.

This time Ronan doesn’t shrug off his hand. Taking a deep breath, Adam slides his hand from Ronan’s shoulder to his waist, loops his arms around his tense, trembling body, and presses himself to his back. The leather of Ronan’s jacket is warm and soft against his cheek, and he feels Ronan go slack a moment before he feels hands cover his where they’re clasped over Ronan’s stomach.

In a moment, before Adam realises what’s happening, Ronan turns around in his arms and crashes his face into Adam’s neck, his hands digging into Adam’s shoulders in a way that’s almost painful. Adam doesn’t care, not when Ronan’s body is crumpling, his tears and ragged breath both hot and wet against his collar. His own breath catches as Ronan’s knees give way, and Adam lowers them both to the floor.

He doesn’t say _shh_ or _it’ll be okay_ because he knows both of those would be useless. All he can do is hold tight to Ronan as he crumbles, trying to keep all the pieces of him together. He doesn’t know how long it is before Ronan cries himself out, but Adam’s shirt is soaked before the end. He keeps his cheek pressed to Ronan’s buzzed hair and tries to keep him from shaking himself apart.

“I _forgot_.” He whispers to Adam’s neck, voice raw. “How the fuck could I _forget_?” This sets his body jerking again, sobs trying to get out something he’s run out of like retching on an empty stomach.

“You didn’t forget, you were distracted. There was a lot going on.” Adam answers, knowing that it won’t help, but knowing he has to try. “We had to focus on Gansey. We knew that… we knew we couldn’t help her.” Adam has to close his eyes and swallow the lump in his throat. “Gansey still had a chance. It was all… It was all too big.”

“I forgot about my _mother_ , Adam!” He’s louder this time, more forceful, but Ronan still doesn’t move his head from Adam’s shoulder, although his hands twist more tightly in the back of his shirt.

Adam doesn’t say anything to this, knows he can’t. He tries to remind himself of the photograph of Niall and Aurora Lynch in their bedroom upstairs, the wild, carefree smile that’s so much more than the Aurora he had known. That was the Aurora Ronan was mourning now. So he tightens his arms around Ronan, crushing him close, pressing his own face into Ronan’s shoulder so they form a mirror image of each other, a yin-yang of grief.

“Come on.” Adam whispers after what must have been an hour, maybe two, and encourages Ronan to his feet.

Upstairs in Ronan’s room, Adam climbs into bed beside him. He faces him across the mattress, traces the lines of his furrowed face with his fingers, strokes his thumb along his rough jaw. His eyes are bright and this close Adam can see the raw edges, the bloodshot whites, the dark patches on his lips where he’s bitten through to blood.

“Adam,” Ronan says, a whisper, and covers Adam’s hand with his own. Adam waits for the rest, but Ronan just sighs and closes his eyes.

For the second night in a row, Adam Parrish sleeps with Ronan Lynch soft beside him.

He wonders when his heart will stop breaking every time he looks at him.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's Bluesey time!

Things are different. Quiet.

It takes a week for Jimi and Orla to move back to 300 Fox Way. Apparently it took a while for whatever radio frequency they were tuned into to clear the busy static of a demon being unmade and a boy being reborn.

Gansey is Gansey, but he’s also More. Calla watches him carefully, her eyebrows concerned. Gwenllian just smiles at him with tight lips and wide staring eyes, then climbs Artemus with deliberate clumsiness, shrieking with laughter and song. Blue sits with him on her bedroom floor and watches as he studies her hands. She wonders if he can feel her heart swelling until she feels her ribs are about to burst.

 _Alive alive alive_ , her pulse sings, and she presses her hand to his cheek and pulls him towards her. _Alive alive alive_.

It’s a thrill, the simple brush of his closed lips against hers, delicate and sensitive. His hand on her neck, thumb grazing her ear. It still feels so forbidden, and she wonders if it will ever stop.

“Blue,” he whispers against her skin, and a thrill passes through her, bright and hot and vibrant. She gasps the air from his lungs, splays her hand over his chest so she can feel his heart beating. _Alive alive alive_.

Her whole body trembles with the wanting of him, alive and whole and warm beneath her palms. She still doesn’t believe it, still doesn’t believe he can be here in front of her with his bright eyes and tan skin, there’s still a small part of her that can’t quite believe that he’s Gansey. But there’s the mint on his breath and the self-deprecation in the curve of his mouth, his vivid, soul-deep care for all of them.

For once in her life, Blue Sargent is lost for words. She just breathes him in and wraps herself around him and never wants to let him go, boat shoes and polo-shirts and all.

“Shh,” he says, and that’s when she realises she’s crying, hot tears rolling down her face and soaking into his shirt. He brings a thumb up and wipes them away, holds her jaw in the palm of his hand and looks in her eyes. “It’s okay, it’s alright.”

Blue knows it is, and that’s why she’s crying, she thinks. For every moment she’s known this intense and curious boy, she’s known that he will die. She has seen him die, has been the cause. She still hasn’t recovered, but she knows the worst has happened.

Now, for the first time her mind is free to wander, to imagine the possibilities of what might be. She feels she has aged a hundred years in a single day, but has another hundred, another thousand, stretched out in front of her.

She doesn’t know what to say. Her tongue is too swollen and her throat is too tight to let anything pass, so she just tries to smile at him, and kisses him. She _kisses him_ , and she wonders if the sheer possibility of that simple act will ever leave her anything but breathless.

The phone rings downstairs. A glass smashes in the kitchen. Calla’s fractious voice rises in Orla’s name.

Blue Sargent sits in her room and kisses Richard Gansey III. And he is alive.


	5. Chapter 5

Aglionby is different when they return. The stone walls and iron gates seem smaller, more insubstantial. A tree house crowded with ideals that go unrealised. As he drove through the gates with Ronan in the seat beside him, Gansey felt strangely dreamlike. School was usually an anchor in the turmoil of magic that his life had become. That ocean had settled now, and lapped peacefully at the back of his mind.

Everything had been cast in a strange new light in this new life.

Eyes followed the Camaro as it crawled noisily to the parking lot. Groups of boys huddled together, whispering, as they watched Gansey and Ronan climb from the car. They had, evidently, been missed.

Even after speaking with his parents and explaining the situation of the fundraiser with a bowed head and his tongue dripping with half-truths, Gansey still wasn’t entirely sure how many days he’d lost. He knew about the day in the cave, but he wasn’t sure how long he had been dead, how long it had taken for Cabeswater to remake him. It had taken him days to recover, and they had all blurred together in a swirl of night-darkness and Blue’s breath on his neck. He had clearly missed enough school to have been missed, and the fundraiser would have been enough to start the rumours snaking around campus.

He shrugged his bag onto his shoulder and kept his head up, projecting all the Ganseyness he could muster. Ronan snorted. Ronan even being here was still a surprise to Gansey, but he hadn’t explained his reasoning. He suspected Adam’s hand, and he felt strangely conflicted about it. His plan for Ronan’s diploma had fallen through, and he knew Helen’s fingerprints were all over that because she had told him flat-out that she had spoken to Child about it. But here Ronan was anyway, a boy-shaped thundercloud beside him.

Adam met them outside Borden House. Gansey bumped his knuckles; Ronan shared a look with him. Gansey felt, for the first time, something like awkward standing between them. They went inside.

Aglionby had finally managed to track down a Latin teacher, apparently a more difficult challenge than Gansey would have suspected. Then again, most of Gansey’s life so far had run on dead languages. He supposed not everyone’s did. Most of the class was assembled when they arrived, but the teacher was not yet in sight.

“Oh,” Spencer said, eyeing them as they entered the classroom. His lip was curled and he seemed to be studying Adam in particular. “I thought Parrish had finally burned out.” He turned to the boy beside him, but his eyes stayed on Adam. “I can’t believe they let these people in.” Spencer was the worst kind of Aglionby snob. He always held a glint of Mediterranean sun in his skin from family vacations, and there was always a curl to his lip and a set to his brow that implied nothing was interesting to him.

“What did you say?” Adam’s voice was flint striking sparks as he stepped forward. Gansey could see the set of his shoulder blades through his sweater, his white knuckles where he gripped the strap of his bag. Spencer’s eyes flicked up disdainfully, lingering on Adam’s hands.

“I said,” he stood so he was almost toe-to-toe with Adam, but Adam had the height. “I can’t believe they let trailer trash in here. They only leave dirt and greasy fingerprints over everything.”

Gansey got ready to step in. Adam’s pride was gasoline, and Spencer right now looked a lot like a match. Gansey had seen Adam’s temper in action. Before he could take a step, though, Ronan’s hand landed heavy on his shoulder; his eyes were steel but his mouth was curled in a bloodthirsty smile. He gave a jerk of his chin and kept his eyes on Adam.

“Say that again.” The warning in Adam’s eyes and voice went over Spencer’s head. Gansey’s mind whirled with the possibilities of this fight. Adam getting expelled was the worst, Adam being hit was close. These were what his mind kept returning to, but Ronan’s hand stayed on his shoulder.

“You’re dirt, Parrish,” Spencer growled, “And that’s all you’ll ever be.”

The smile that flicked onto Adam’s face was one that Gansey had never seen before, and that worried him. Adam took a step back from Spencer and spread his hands in front of him. Gansey’s lungs emptied.

“If you think,” Adam said, and Gansey felt a burst of pride at his steady, confident tone. “That I have any less right than you to be here because I _work for it_ , then you’ve got a real distorted view of how the world works.”

“Me?” Spencer’s eyebrows were in his hairline, his mouth pursed. “What do you-”

“You think having everything handed to you makes you right?” Adam had the attention of everyone in the room. “You don’t know a fucking thing. What are you going to do? Get into Yale because of who your parents are? Scrape your degree and go straight into a made-up job in Daddy’s company because you can’t do anything on your own?” Adam drew his eyes up and down Spencer’s uniform. Gansey had never seen such contempt on his face. “You don’t know a fucking thing about achievement. Yeah, I get my hands dirty to keep myself here, so what? That makes you better than me?” Adam’s snort made the hair on Gansey’s neck stand up. He was suddenly struck by how childish Adam made Spencer look just by standing next to him.

This Adam was entirely new. He wasn’t the timid, fragile thing he had seemed when Gansey first met him, nor was he the brittle, prideful creature that had bitten Gansey’s hand because he did not want to be fed. Adam was no longer a Magician, but the strength of the ley line still seemed to beat in his veins, to flow up the proud length of his spine.

“One day,” his voice was dangerous as he pressed a finger to Spencer’s chest, just below the V of his sweater, “you’re going to have to work for something and you won’t have a clue.” _Then you’ll lose everything_ went unsaid. Gansey was sure everyone in the room heard it.

“Fuck you, Parrish,” Spencer said, but his voice was small and nothing followed it. He and Adam glared at each other for another moment before Spencer backed down, snatching his bag from the floor and stalking out.

The room was silent for a long moment as the dust settled. It was broken by the vicious bark of Ronan’s laugh as he stepped forward and messed Adam’s hair.

“ _Illegitimi non carborundum_ , dude.” Ronan’s grin was fierce, his arm around Adam’s shoulders. When Adam returned it, Gansey saw an awful lot of Ronan in the set of his jaw.

Noise returned to the classroom in a whoosh of the release of a collective breath. Chatter bubbled up again, laughter, awed faces glancing over to Adam as he settled down between Gansey and Ronan.

“Christ, Parrish,” Ronan was breathless, his face the most awed of all.

“That was amazing,” Gansey said, bumping Adam’s knuckles. Adam’s eyes were bright with victory, his cheeks flushed.

“I think he shit himself,” Ronan said, teeth sharp in his grin, “there was a definite stink as he passed.”

The teacher entered, an ancient man whose jowls hung over his collar in a way that reminded Gansey entirely of Malory. They had clearly had to break him out of retirement. Ronan’s stage whisper let them know that he thought it was more likely to have been the crypt.

The excitement in the room simmered down gradually as the awareness of his presence crept through the room. He was silent, watching over the boys until all eyes were on him. His eyes flitted over the occupied seats and lingered on the unoccupied, lingered even longer on the Gansey-Parrish-Lynch triumvirate.

“Where is Spencer?” He asked when he had everyone’s attention. His voice was deeper and stronger than Gansey had expected.

“Licking his wounds!” Carruthers called from the back of the room. Gansey saw the corner of Adam’s mouth twitch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My tenses in these things are all over the place I am so sorry.  
> Also, Ronan's bit of Latin roughly translates as "Don't let the bastards get you down".


	6. Chapter 6

Ronan Lynch in the halls of Aglionby is a neon sign in the daylight. He is visible and legible, but Adam knows he can shine more brightly. Ronan is a creature made for the night, for wide open skies and the glow of the dashboard. Inside he is dimmed, but the invective of his is existence is still scrawled on the walls.

It had started when Helen had come by Monmouth to chew Gansey out about his deal with Child. Adam had known that there had been a deal of some kind, but the specifics escaped him. As Helen had stood on the outskirts of Gansey’s model Henrietta speaking calmly and coolly and firmly, not screaming or shouting but channelling all of the power in her blue blood to hold the room, she had laid out every step of Gansey’s plan, from the details of Ronan’s diploma to the paperwork surrounding Monmouth Manufacturing.

Adam had been struck dumb at Gansey’s duplicity. Ronan had lost it.

Over the time he had known Ronan, Adam had seen him lose his temper more times than he could count. It usually involved him punching walls or kicking cars or slamming doors or revving engines. It used to involve drinking, but there hadn’t been much of that lately. What Adam had never seen was Ronan directing every ounce of his hurt and menace unswervingly towards Gansey.

To his credit, Gansey hadn’t snarled back. He had just stood watching with his sad old eyes as Ronan screamed in his face and jabbed him in the chest. Adam hadn’t intervened; neither had Helen.

“I’m sorry,” Gansey had said, looking at the strap of Ronan’s muscle shirt rather than at his face. “I thought I was helping. I thought you’d want it someday.” Ronan had snorted and turned on his heel before swinging back to face Gansey, a violent ballet.

“Who _the fuck_ do you think you are to tell me what I want, _Dick_?” Ronan had snarled, compressing all of the bile in his system into _Dick_ and spitting it out at Gansey’s feet. “Why the hell would I want something I haven’t worked for? What the fuck would it mean to me?” Adam had felt a strange surge of pride at that, hadn’t missed Gansey’s eyes flicking to him for an accusing second. He had tilted his chin and set his shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” Gansey said again, all regal poise and genuine regret.

Ronan had just placed his hand in the centre of Gansey’s chest and given him a small, deliberate shove. “Fix it,” he had snarled between his teeth, and stormed out.

As far as Adam was aware, Gansey had. The cheery waves from Headmaster Child had stopped and teachers no longer enquired after Ronan. The latter of these was because, shockingly, Ronan had actually started turning up to school. He had dropped to the bare minimum of classes he needed to take to graduate. He didn’t explain his sudden presence in the far-from-hallowed halls of Aglionby, but Adam suspected a deep-seated desire to prove Gansey wrong, that he could do it. When asked, Ronan would just shrug and say how boring the Barns were when everyone else was at school, or that he needed to stay living at Monmouth for technicalities since his update to his father’s will had stated that he couldn’t legally take up residence in the Barns until Matthew turned eighteen. Adam would just look at him out of the corner of his eye. Ronan Lynch hated liars, but never seemed to grasp the fact that there was a big difference between _not lying_ and _telling the truth_.

So Ronan had started turning up in the mornings for Latin, even though the retiree the school had found made him cringe in horror. He went to Technology. He willingly took up _Accounting_ of all things and complained about it his every waking moment. He signed up for a Physical Education course to make up his credits. It was too late in the year to make the changes to his schedule, really, but the Administration yielded. Adam wondered if Child had intervened.

Whatever Ronan’s motivation was for his sudden attendance, Adam was, selfishly, glad for it. He was glad for Ronan’s shoulder bumping against his on the walk between classes, glad for the jagged smile on Ronan’s face as he messed up Matthew’s curls, glad to know that Ronan would have _something_ out of the ordeal.

He was, though, somehow depleted. He was the same as he always had been: all thuggish posturing, sneering comments, and vicious smiles that were more like grimaces. In the classrooms and quads of Aglionby, though, his brightness was gone. He was the same as he always had been, and that was the problem: he was the same as he had been at the start, a caricature of the boy he had been when Adam had met him.

At the Barns, at Monmouth, even at Fox Way, Ronan Now was a glowing thing. Adam had got so used to seeing his soft, genuine smiles that he had forgotten how rare they had been before. At Aglionby he shrugged on the coat of Ronan Then and wore it like armour, became a boy-shaped thundercloud rather than the early-morning sun he was at home. Adam’s heart hurt from it, that Ronan was strangling himself with the tie and the textbooks.

One night in Adam’s attic apartment over St Agnes, Ronan’s head on his shoulder and steady breath on his neck, Adam had asked him why he was doing it. He had his future planned out, and none of it needed an Aglionby diploma. He didn’t need to suffocate. Ronan had grunted and pressed his face to Adam’s skin. He had been silent so long that Adam had given up on getting an answer.

“I don’t want to miss out on a moment,” Ronan had said, so quietly that Adam wouldn’t have heard him had Ronan been on his other side. “You’re all,” he had paused, sighed, found Adam’s hand and linked it with his own. “You’re all going to go,” he said, his voice a breath over Adam’s chest. “And I don’t want to be working on the Barns thinking ‘I should’ve spent more time with them’.”

“We’re coming back,” Adam had whispered in reply, shifting to look Ronan in the eye. “You know we’re coming back.” Ronan’s cheek had been rough and warm against his palm.

“I know,” Ronan’s lips brushed against his life-line. “Doesn’t mean I can’t make the most of you now.” He had kissed Adam then, sweet and urgent, and Adam hadn’t had the words to continue.

So he watches this Old Ronan striding through the halls of Aglionby, sneering at the students and the teachers and at the buildings themselves, sees the tie tightening around his neck as the day wears on. Adam tries to help, tries to loosen the knot in small ways: brushing his hand against Ronan’s as they walk between classes, catching his eye while teachers drone on in front of them, tugging him around the back of Borden House to give Ronan’s starved blood the air from his own lungs. It seems to help. He sees flashes of the bright New Ronan in these moments.

Perhaps, he thinks, fingers tugging at Ronan’s tie, this isn’t a New Ronan after all, not really. Maybe it’s an even Older Ronan, one Adam never met shrugging off a mask to reach the air. Maybe this New/Old Ronan is something entirely different, the Real Ronan breaking free of the chrysalis of grief he had been trapped in since Adam had first known him, transformed into something altogether more beautiful and soaring.

Adam digs his fingers into the fracture lines and pulls.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Henry isn't sure where he fits in with all of the magic and wonder.

Sometimes, Henry Cheng wonders what he’s got himself into.

He’s no stranger to getting into things – he hasn’t exactly had an uncomplicated life by anyone’s standards – but Richard Gansey the Third and his court are definitely more than Henry’s used to.

He isn’t even sure if he arrived at Peak Weird, or if the whole “bringing people back from the dead” and “taking hooved girls out of dreams” thing is just Base Line Weird.

Not that the Weird is a bad thing; it’s what drew him to Gansey in the first place.

The thing is, Henry knows Weird. He’s seen his mother’s collection (well, some of it. A little bit of it) and, well, he _thought_ he’d known weird. But there’s a difference between seeing a statue in a glass case and being told it cries blood before an earthquake (that one’s in his mom’s house in San Francisco for practicality reasons), and seeing a five foot nothing girl killing a boy with her lips. There’s a difference between looking into a mirror that doesn’t show your own reflection but that of your deadliest enemy (Henry had not recognised the man at the time), and seeing Adam Parrish _communicate with a forest_ and _get it to bring Gansey back to life_.

All in all, Henry thinks he’s adjusting remarkably well.

Here are some things he’s learning:

  * Richard “Dick” Campbell Gansey the Third is a king among men (this Henry technically already knew, but he feels it’s a fitting start to the list)
  * Blue Sargent is tiny and full of rage and joy and hope
  * Adam Parrish laughs much more than Henry had expected
  * Ronan Lynch is much less of an asshole than Henry had expected
  * Someone called Noah saved the world
  * Everyone else is weirdly into Latin



There are other things he’s learning, but not all of them fit well on a list. There’s Monmouth Manufacturing, which is something out of a teenage boy’s architectural wet dream, except with rather more books on obscure Welsh legend and rather less porn. There’s 300 Fox Way, full to bursting but always willing and able to accept more, stinking of strange teas and burning herbs and baking pies. There’s the Barns, soft and light and airy, and the way when they gather there they all become soft and light and airy.

There’s Blue lying on the chilled December ground looking up at the stars, her eyes wide and bright as she reaches her hands up to see if she can touch them; there’s her laugh when Henry offers her a piggy back in case that would help. There’s the gentleness between Ronan and Adam, two boys that from a distance Henry would never have described as gentle; there’s the way that gentleness slowly turns to him as well. There’s Gansey’s eyes, holding so much wisdom and time and youth; there are the ribbons connecting him to the rest of them, tugging so they follow him anywhere. There’s the Camaro with its offensive paint job and the BMW with its offensive music and its more offensive driver, and now there’s Henry’s Fisker, which seems to offend Ronan for reasons unknown.

Henry, if he’s honest, isn’t sure where he belongs. He _wants_ to belong, by Jove does he ever want to belong, but he’s never been good at carving out niches. It occurs to him, little by little, that the niche is being carved for him. It’s in the way Gansey always saves a seat for him in the cafeteria, in the way Blue leans out of the Camaro window and yells _“Get in loser, we’re going shopping!”_ while Gansey drives past Litchfield House. It’s in the way Ronan gruffly shoves his hand against Henry’s chest until Henry grasps the object in his hand, a figurine of Madonna in the Popemobile that plays the chorus of “I Should Be So Lucky” when Henry opens the door. _“I don’t fucking know,”_ Ronan had said, not looking Henry in the face, _“but I’m sure as hell not keeping it.”_ Henry had bitten down on the _“Aw, thanks, man!”_ on the tip of his tongue, realising it would be counter-productive. He hadn’t even pointed out that “I Should Be So Lucky” is not, in fact, a Madonna song. It’s in the way Adam presses his knuckle to his mouth to stop himself laughing too loudly when Henry shows him this curious object.

If he listens closely enough, he can hear himself settling into their rhythms, can feel them pick up some of his. He talks to Blue about seeing the world and saving it, and manages not to offend her. He listens to Gansey relay the lore of Glendower from the beginning, for the first time telling it as a finished story. Henry listens attentively, and encourages him on when Gansey struggles with having nothing left to find.

When they share a booth at Nino’s, though, he can’t help but feel like he’s taking someone’s place, like he’s sitting on a grave. That feeling will pass, he knows. Grief is a strange and complicated thing, and he is an outsider to this curious and particular brand.

Sometimes, Henry wonders what he’s got himself into with Gansey and his court, but it’s wonder in all its definitions, and he’s never been so glad of anything, except maybe RoboBee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Henry so much how did this happen.
> 
> (ps [hmu on tumblr](http://pygmypyncher.tumblr.com/), i'm in so deep i've started a sideblog)


	8. Chapter 8

Mornings have had an abrupt change of position on Ronan Lynch’s list of favourite things.

They had never actually been on the list before. Mornings used to follow sleepless nights in a way that left his eyes stinging and were terrifying often enough for them to be solidly placed on his list of _least_ favourite things instead.

Post-Kavinsky, post-Glendower, post-Cabeswater, they had slowly crept onto the other list and were now gradually sneaking towards the top ten. Ronan no longer had nightmares, not ones that he feared bringing back, so he no longer feared waking.

Mornings at the Barns were definitely in the top ten. Spring mornings with the sun falling warm and easy through his thin curtains, catching the dust-motes dancing in the air like daytime cousins to his dreamt fireflies, landing soft on freckled cheeks and pale lashes. Those were Ronan’s favourite.

Adam always slept quietly and solidly, as though he was trying to catch up on years of missed sleep. Ronan never woke him up, couldn’t bear to. Instead, he lay watching Adam sleep, letting the thrill of it travel up his spine until his entire body was almost vibrating with it. _This was allowed_. Adam’s face was a thing of wonder.

Once, Ronan had overheard some boys at Aglionby quietly laughing at Adam’s pale eyebrows, the arrangement of his features, the size of his nose. Ronan hadn’t reacted, hadn’t even glared at them although it wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary for him to glare at that particular group for no other reason than existing. They were clearly just too stupid to see the beauty of him, the elegance and the strangeness of him. Adam’s face was _interesting_ , interesting in the way a work of art can be beautiful but challenging to view, in the way a piece of music can bring you to tears without you ever knowing why. Ronan never got tired of looking at him. He hadn’t glared at those boys, but he _had_ keyed their cars.

“You are such a creep,” Adam’s voice was soft and sleepy, his eyes still closed as a smile pulled at his lips. His hand twitched and found the stem of one of the flowers Ronan had woken with. His accent was broad and gentle with sleep.

“ _You’re_ a creep,” Ronan retorted weakly, but kept looking. His heart fluttered along with Adam’s lashes as his eyes opened, pale and warm and mocking, a multitude of colours in the sunbeam.

“Creative.” Adam tapped Ronan’s nose with the flower, something between a poppy, a peony, and a tulip with veins in an array of pinks and purples. Ronan had known the name of it in his dream. There were several more scattered between them on the bed. Adam inhaled and sighed the breath back out. “These flowers smell like gasoline,” he said, teeth shining in his smile.

“I like the smell of gasoline.” Ronan shifted closer. He closed his hand over Adam’s on the stem of the flower.

“You’re a delinquent.”

“ _You’re_ a delinquent,” Ronan couldn’t stop his smile as he replied, didn’t want to stop it. Adam snorted and rolled his eyes and Ronan nudged their noses together.

“Now you’re just being childish.” Adam said, but Ronan heard his laugh.

“Now _you’re_ ju-” Adam shut him up with a kiss, smile to smile. It’s what Ronan had been playing for all along, really, and he knew Adam knew that. Under the blankets Adam’s skin was sleep-warm and smooth. Pressing a hand to his ribs, Ronan breathed in his sigh. The gasoline and motor oil scent of the flowers rose up around them as the petals were crushed under their elbows and shoulders. The smell of it and the taste of Adam combined set something off in Ronan, and he pressed forward with more urgency.

“ _Ronan_.” He’ll never get tired of Adam saying his name like that, either.

The flower fell from Adam’s hand as his fingers found Ronan’s head instead. The press of fingers against his skull made Ronan shiver, Adam’s long fingers giving just the right amount of pressure. He let his groan go, low against Adam’s throat.

The scent of the flowers was mechanical but delicate, and the taste of them on Adam’s skin was the perfect complement to the salt of his sweat. Ronan’s mouth watered. He was hungry, his soul growling for more, more, more, no matter how much he had. When it came to Adam Parrish, whether it was his smiles or his laughs or his body, Ronan was insatiable.

“Morning,” Adam said, when the flowers had been reduced to little more than stains on the sheet. He was still getting his breath back, his cheeks pink, a laugh lingering on his lips. The sunlight had moved further down, now illuminating the dusting of light hair on his chest.

“Morning,” Ronan replied, stretching like a cat with satisfaction. He didn’t miss the flick of Adam’s eyes across his body. He let the smug smile settle on his lips. “You working today?”

“Mmhmm,” Adam stretched his arm out over Ronan’s chest, pillowing his head on his shoulder. Something bright settled in Ronan’s ribs. “Told Boyd I’d be in at eleven.”

“You coming home?” Ronan asked, hoping it wouldn’t be one of the nights Adam stayed at his St Agnes apartment, hoping he wouldn’t be working early in the morning.

“Mmhmm,” Adam answered. When Ronan glanced down, there was a small smile on his face and promise in his eyes.

The bright feeling in Ronan’s ribs warmed and spread until his fingers were tingling with it. Home for Adam was a complex thing, a mix of feelings and memories that Ronan felt on the brink of understanding. Adam’s heartbeat against his arm belied his casual response. Taking his hand, Ronan threaded their fingers together and raised Adam’s knuckles to his lips.

He was forging a home here with this boy, with their varied and combined neuroses, but it was warm and bright and Ronan could feel the promise of it pumping in his veins.


	9. Chapter 9

The apartment above St Agnes is a liminal space. It holds Adam in a bubble of now. It has only ever been a stop-gap. He has no attachment to it. He knows he ought to, knows he should feel some small joy or relief at the independence it affords him, the sanctuary from stinging words and bruising fists, but it feels too small and too grey for that.

He goes back occasionally, when feast of the Barns becomes too much for his malnourished heart. The small attic space draws some of the heat from him, a compress on a fevered forehead. He spread-eagles himself over the bed and breathes in the bleach-and-mildew scent of it.

In the bathroom, the tinfoil folded neatly under the sink remains untouched.

He works throughout the summer, paying his still meagre rent and saving for college. His ribs have to expand to accommodate his heart when he remembers that, another dream becoming reality.

College is a mountain he’s been walking towards his whole life. It had started small, only a bump on the horizon, but as he’s travelled closer the larger it looms over him. Aglionby was a foothill. Now he’s standing at the base of the mountain and he can’t see the peak, but it’s exhilarating. He feels like he’s about to climb Kilimanjaro. It is going to be difficult, he knows, but Adam Parrish thrives on challenge. He won’t need to work three jobs, his savings and his scholarships will see to that, but that isn’t going to make it easy.

As he lies on his lumpy mattress with his eyes closed and a smile spreading over his face, he doesn’t think he can wait to see what’s waiting for him on the other side of four years. When he tries to envisage it he sees a diploma, feels pride straightening his spine, hears the crunch of tyres on a long, winding drive.

He knows he’ll come back. He knows it with the solid certainty that he knows he’s leaving.

His eyes twitch open as the sound of the organ floats in through his window. The service is over, the heavy church doors opened. Soon the sound of chattered conversation will cover the strains of the organ, and car engines will come to life. Horns will toot and laughs will float through the air.

Adam stays where he is, spread out and cool, as the knock comes at his door.

“It’s open,” he says, and then Ronan Lynch is in the room. He looks startlingly grown up in his suit, his tie knotted neatly for church in a way it never was for Aglionby.

“Hey,” he says as he makes his way over to Adam, kneels on the bed between his legs, lowers himself down for a kiss.

Adam hums in pleasure. Ronan’s hand is gentle on his jaw, eyelashes fluttering against his cheek. He smells of wood polish and incense; Adam wonders, absently, how blasphemous it is that he finds it almost erotic. Ronan pulls back with a sigh, nudges his nose against Adam’s, then finally sits back on his heels.

“You’re not keeping this place on, are you?” Ronan’s tone is deliberately dismissive as he looks around the featureless apartment with a sneer.

“No,” Adam says. “Not after I go.”

There’s no way he could afford to keep paying the rent as well as covering all the expenses that college requires. If he’s being truthful, the only reason he’s still keeping up with the rent is because he’s still working at the factory and the garage, and the Barns is too far to travel to when he works until late and is up early in the morning. There’s hardly anything of his here anymore, anyway. Only work clothes and toiletries. Everything of any character or use or comfort has migrated to the Barns over the summer.

The look Ronan gives him is complicated, the twist of his mouth disappointed. Adam realises in a flash what Ronan had really been asking. He sits up and traces his thumb along Ronan’s jaw, across his bottom lip.

“I figure I’ve got a place to crash when I come back over breaks.” He slips his thumb between Ronan’s lips and feels his shudder. Before Ronan can say anything, he slides his thumb away and presses his lips to Ronan’s mouth instead. He wonders if he should be embarrassed, taking this for granted. For so long he has held anything he’s been offered at arm’s length, and Ronan hasn’t even offered him this yet, not out loud. He’s worked for it, though, just not in the way that he usually thinks he has to work for things. Or maybe _worked for_ is the wrong way to think of it. _Earned_. Adam has earned this, earned Ronan, earned the home he’s been silently offering him all summer.

“Damn right,” Ronan growls into his mouth, and suddenly the kiss grows teeth. A car horn sounding outside, long and repetitive, makes Ronan swear and pull back. “Come on,” he sighs, getting to his feet and holding out a hand. “Matthew wants to have lunch.”

Adam changes into some more lunch-appropriate clothes and follows Ronan out and downstairs to the two other Lynch brothers standing by Declan’s car. Matthew holds his fist out, so Adam bumps it in the complicated pattern Matthew had insisted he learn one week when he’d been staying at the Barns. Declan claps him on the shoulder.

No punches are thrown, no heated words are aimed at weaknesses. Adam sits just at the outskirts of this strange new relationship between the Lynch brothers and watches. This doesn’t feel like his crappy apartment.

It feels like a destination.


	10. Chapter 10

A year after their brief, exhilarating experience as grave-robbers, they visited Noah Czerny’s grave.

It wasn’t the grave in the cemetery where his funeral had been held, where Blue had given his mother a message she had, against her wishes, believed. It was the unmarked one in an old, abandoned church, so old that its name had been lost along with its roof and windows. The floor was earth, centuries of dirt and moss and decay and life, an even carpet but for one area. This earth was fresher, more recently disturbed. This was where they congregated.

Gansey – this strange, new, familiar Gansey – had explained his theory. Well, not his theory exactly, but his strong, marrow-deep _feeling_ that Noah had done something significant for him, for all of them, although he was unsure exactly what. They believed him. Whatever new life Cabeswater had given to Gansey, it was one that gave him an insight beyond the present, not quite the past and not quite the future, but all of it at once.

He had gone to 300 Fox Way the day after he had been breathed back to life by the forest. Maura and Calla had looked at him with wide eyes and then at each other. Calla had refused to touch him, especially with Blue at his side, holding his hand. He was uncanny, Something More, but he wasn’t psychic. Not in the useful sense, not enough to draw predictions or glimpses. What he had, Maura explained, was a chronic case of déjà vu.

But he knew Noah had been important. They hadn’t seen him since. They hadn’t felt the chill of his presence, hadn’t heard his voice in their ear, hadn’t seen some small thing across the room moving of its own accord. They knew he was gone in the way you knew a match had burnt out and wouldn’t light again, but they had asked the women of 300 Fox Way for confirmation. Calla had immediately nodded, violet lips pressed tight together.

The churchyard was dark and warm in the summer air. Adam laid down flowers. Gansey placed a beautiful raven made from paper. Ronan sprinkled some glitter that seemed to shine more than it should in the darkness. Blue placed a pale rock she had engraved:

_N.C._

_Remembered_

Henry didn’t place anything; he wasn’t there. It was too personal, too difficult to explain how this dead boy had meant so much to them all. They had invited him, but he had declined, and they had all been silently relieved at his tact.

“Thank you,” Blue said. She kissed her fingers and pressed them to the earth that held Noah’s bones, then, “we miss you.”

A breeze rustled the branches of the trees stretching over the empty roof of the church, but it was a fluke of weather rather than the supernatural. It wasn’t cold. It wasn’t Latin.

Blue retreated to Gansey. He folded her in his arms and pressed his cheek to the top of her head.

“See you, man.” Ronan said, stepping back, leading the exit.

They went back to Monmouth, where they didn’t get drunk, despite Ronan’s stockpiling of possibly dreamt beer. They were quiet, but it was a warm kind of quiet, sitting close, threading fingers together, warmed by the knowledge that everyone else’s thoughts are the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all, folks. Thanks for reading, I hope you've enjoyed these pointless ramblings as much as I enjoyed writing them. 
> 
> I'm probably going to go back through and edit this at some point. The rush of excitement hampered my self-criticism, which may well not have been a bad thing
> 
> Feel free to come [yell at me on tumblr](http://pygmypyncher.tumblr.com/).


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